Twitter Tips the Tuna

On Wednesday, Twitter tipped the tuna.  By that I mean it started peaking.  Adoption amongst the people I know seemed to double immediately, an apparent tipping point. It hasn't jumped the shark, and probably won't until Steven Colbert covers this messaging of the mundane.  As Twitter turns 1 on March 13th, not only is there a quickening of users, but messages per user.

Twitter, in a nutshell, is mobile social software that lets you broadcast and receive short messages with your social network.  You can use it with SMS (sending a message to 40404), on the web or IM.  A darn easy API has enabled other clients such as Twitterific for the Mac.  Twitter is Continuous Partial Presence, mostly made up of mundane messages in answer to the question, "what are you doing?" A never-ending steam of presence messages prompts you to update your own.  Messages are more ephemeral than IM presence -- and posting is of a lower threshold, both because of ease and accessibility, and the informality of the medium.

Anil Dash was spot-on to highlight "The sign of success in social software is when your community does something you didn't expect."  A couple of weeks ago it became a convention to start messages with @username as a way of saying something to someone visible to everyone.  Within the limited affordances of the tool, people started to use it not only for presence, but a kind of shouting at the party conversation.  Further, when you see an to someone who isn't in your social network, you find yourself inclined to go see who it is or add them if they are a friend who just joined.  This kind of social discovery goes beyond seeing friend lists on profiles, aids network structure and quickens adoption.

While the app is viral (you have to get others to adopt to be able to use it), mobile social software has great word-of-mouth properties.  At Wikimania this summer, a buzz went off in my pocket when I was having dinner, which prompted me to get Jason Calacanis, Dave Winer and the brothers Gillmor to adopt.  Wednesday was the first day of TED, so a bunch of A-listers spread it.  At SXSW it seems to be the smart mob tool of choice, and there is even a group for it with a feature I've never seen before, JOIN. UPDATE: Judging by this SXSW Twitter screen, Obvious is embracing obvious group forming to further adoption.

Most recently there has been a rise in fake identities and even celebrities. Partially because people want to form more than one group, sometimes as integration points with other communities.  Some of the groups I've spotted include AdaptivePath, 1Password (release update), Barcamp, ArsTechnica, BBC (stories), Digg (stories), MarsEdit (release update), Technorati (a hack that begs people for blurbs in WTF), Techmeme (a hack that posts new top stories), Twitterific (release updates) and Wordpress (release updates).  Andy Carvin hypothesizes Twitter could save lives in a catastrophe, but group forming is already ahead of his theory with the USGS Earthquake Center on Twittter. If you come across other groups, please add them in comments.

This week most of my company joined Twitter and I set up http://twitter.com/socialtext for no reason in particular.  I posted the login in a private wiki page to let anyone contribute.  But when Moconner saw how simple the API was, he wrote a bot to let us post from our IRC channel.  Now we have a low threshold way to express group identity that fits with the way we work.

Liz Lawley well addressed the differences of this form of presence and criticisms of mundane content and interruption costs.  She highlights "exploring clusters of loosely related people by looking at the updates from their friends. There are stories told in between updates." 

However, I do think the the interruption tax is significant -- especially with the quickening of adoption.  You use your social network as a filter, which helps both in scoping participation within a pull model of attention management, but also to Liz's point that my friends are digesting the web for me and perhaps reducing my discovery costs.  But the affordance within Twitter of both mobile and web, that not only lets Anil use it (he is Web-only) is what helps me manage attention overload.  I can throttle back to web-only and curb interruptions, simply by texting off.

Good thing too, because back when it was called twittr people held back believing what they posted would be interrupting on mostly mobile devices.  Lately I think people just go for it, and most consumption is on the web or other clients.  I'd love to see some research on posts/user, client use, tracking @username, group identities, geographic dispersion and revealing other undesigned conventions.

Comments

[Steve Rhodes]

One way in which twitter is less ephemeral than IM since the twits are archived (I wonder about the wisdom of one person who is complaining about work - perhaps there should be a way to make specfic updates private).

It would help if there were an easy way to designate which of your friends updates would be sent to your phone and which you'd read on the web (or using twitterific - though even that can seem like too much of an interruption of you are following too many people).

One thing I was just able to do I hadn't been able to do before was post from my treo using using the blazer browser.

That will definately allow me to post more often when I am away from a computer (since I don't have unlimted SMS).

This March 7th net@nite interview with Evan Williams gives some interesting background on twitter

[andy carvin]

Thanks for pointing out the USGS group on Twitter - that's just awesome to see people are thinking about the potential of sms in emergency response.

[Jeremy Toeman]

I guess I just can't believe this has longevity. Sooner or later people will come to the realization that most everyone's lives are just as mundane as their own, and getting frequent updates only brings that further to life. I think it's a neat idea, but the novelty will fade, and fade fast...

[Rex]

I resisted it, now I feel like a follower!

But I'm on there - http://twitter.com/RexDixon - it seems like it could get very addictive.

Rex
Criteo Tech Evangelist
http://widget.criteo.com/

[Toby Hede]

I made autotwit.com as a joke about a week ago ... suddenly Twitter is getting all sorts of attention and the idea may not be so funny after all ... I think Twitter is going to expand to encompass a range of services.

[Tom]

I was playing around and found a number of main-stream sites on Twitter.
CNN (news headlines), CNNBK (breaking news), NYTIMES, GOOGLE (News, US News, etc.) I'm sure there are a lot more to find.
http://twitter.com/fogview

[Chris Heuer]

Ross - I continue to see new and new uses for taking this form of communications within other interesting contexts, but still am concerned that the viral nature of it may be the death of it's usage - at least amongst many of the early adopters now inundated by too much attention leakage.

Interestingly, the post I wrote last night leaned more towards Fonzi strapping on his water skis, but if you came back from a night out and saw the majority of your Twitter update screen filled with a chat between 2 people, you might have felt a bit differently.

The problem with those using the @ rossmayfield - to signal a public shout out has been talked about for months as an annoyance, yet most everyone does it (even me occasionally, mea culpa).

Thanks for pointing to Anil's post on this - most excellent read...

[Chris Messina]

Hey Ross, don't forget to mention the Fan Wiki: http://twitter.pbwiki.com... lots of other great resources and links to funny folk.

[hh]

check out http://twitter.pbwiki.com/ for the 411 on twitter celebrities, politicians, hacks, etc. the USGS (sfquake) was hacked together by zooomr.com's kristopher tate.

ma.gnolia.com and 30boxes were two companies who jumped on board early to provide customer service updates via twitter... and 30b just put together a service for mobile users called twapper -- and they've even hacked it to include flickr pix.

twitter may jump the shark, but it is definitely breaking open the field in terms of SMS and mobile content usage.

[Susan F. Heywood]

Hi Ross,

Great post! I love the phrase "tipped the tuna!"

You might like the Squidoo lens I created about Twitter at
http://www.squidoo.com/twitter

It's updated several times a day with the latest Google Blog search for Twitter, and includes links to a number of review sites about it (including this post.)

Best regards,

Susan
http://twitter.com/sheywood

[Chris Lewis]

For a better experience, why not use Netelligence (http://www.netelligence.co.uk)? You choose when you want to get your messages (rather than having them forced on you), and can use it to store all your personal information online that you would have on your cell phone, in case you lost it. You can set up groups, have a group diary and contacts, etc - a much better way to communicate with your friends!

[CB]

I've noted the growing use of Twitter for broadcasting alerts & statuses from monitoring systems (everything from system monitors to greenhouse temperatures). There is an easy-to-use API to post "Twitterings" - see here for an example.

So look beyond the banality & trivia - perhaps the (business) value in Twitter is a universal lightweight messaging platform.

CB

[Charles Wetherall]

How about Twittervision with a purpose? Only stock traders need apply to tickertattle.com

[Jack ( twitter marketing ) Sinclair]

I see today you twittered, so I guess that means you still find value in it, right?

With the easy API, it seems the bots and agents are exploding in popularity, but a quick review
shows most are also not being supported, and dying as quickly as new ones appear.

What fascinates me is Jason, and how he has gathered nearly 10,000 followers - very impressive.